London, UK·Oil analyst

ArhamKhan.

Oil analyst at IMC Trading in London. I also build apps and AI experiments on the side.

See my work or say hi ↗

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My job is working out what the news means for oil.

Ideally before the price has already moved.

Normally that's OPEC meetings, inventory numbers, sanctions headlines. The usual.

Most of the time it's fairly routine.

This year it was a war.

STRAIT OF HORMUZ · SHIPPING LANES

KHAMENEI · KIA FEB 28

AOR · CENTCOM

NETANYAHU · IDF

POTUS · FEB 27 2026

TRUMP AUTHORIZES 'OPERATION EPIC FURY'

FEB 27 2026 · 20:38 UTC · WHITE HOUSE

US + ISRAEL STRIKE IRAN · KHAMENEI KILLED

FEB 28 2026 · 06:35 UTC · TOMAHAWK + B-2

OPEC+ ADDS 206K B/D FOR APRIL

MAR 01 2026 · V8 · SAUDI · RUS · UAE

QATAR LNG HALTED · RAS TANURA HIT

MAR 02 2026 · IRAN DRONE STRIKES

NATANZ · UNDER STRIKE

FORDOW · PGM TARGET

TRUMP + MUSK · PRESS

BUSHEHR NPP

PENTAGON · BRIEF

TRUTH SOCIAL · POST

"I THINK THE WAR IS VERY COMPLETE, PRETTY MUCH"

TRUMP · TRUTH SOCIAL · MAR 8 2026

ABADAN · REFINERY

SUPR LDR

B-2 SPIRIT · 5000LB

TLAM · IN FLIGHT

USN · DDG-127

IRON DOME · INT

F-35I ADIR · IAF

"NO MORE ATTACKS WILL BE MADE BY ISRAEL"

TRUMP · TRUTH SOCIAL · MAR 22 2026

"THIS WILL BE A DOUBLE SIDED CEASEFIRE!"

TRUMP · TRUTH SOCIAL · APR 7 2026

"WE'LL BE LEAVING VERY SOON"

TRUMP · PRESS · MAR 29 2026

IRAN FM: HORMUZ 'COMPLETELY OPEN'

APR 12 2026 · MFA PRESS

US IMPOSES NAVAL BLOCKADE

APR 13 2026 · DOD PRESS

KHARG · TERMINAL

QASED · SLV

RIG · UNDER FIRE

FLARE STACK · REFINERY

SPR · US DOE

STORAGE · TANK FARM

GT XVII · BALLISTIC

PLATFORM · N. SEA

"THEY WANT TO MAKE A DEAL"

TRUMP · APR 30 2026 · POST-CEASEFIRE HIGH

"IRAN CONFLICT WILL END VERY SOON"

TRUMP · TRUTH SOCIAL · MAY 6 2026

IRN · MSSL CITY

SHAHED-136

CVN-75 · GULF

VLCC · GULF ROUTE

TANKER · DAMAGED

IRIN · KILO SUB

45/47 · POTUS

BBG · CL1 CMDTY

TRUMP · SIGNING

IRGC · PARADE

QESHM · SAT

SHAHED · RENDER

IRIN · CEREMONY

POMPEO · TANKER BRIEF

"WE'RE IN THE FINAL STAGES OF IRAN"

TRUMP · PRESS · MAY 17 2026

SPR RESTOCK · $70 BID

MAY 20 2026 · US DOE

"WILL MAKE 'FINAL DETERMINATION' LATER TODAY"

TRUMP · MAY 24 2026 · HE DID NOT

"CANCELLED IRAN STRIKES · [MOU] SIGNING SHORTLY"

TRUMP · TRUTH SOCIAL · JUN 4 2026

VERSAILLES ACCORD SIGNED

JUN 17 2026 · PARIS · TEHRAN

DUAL BLOCKADE LIFTED · HORMUZ REOPENS

JUN 18 2026 · USN · IRIN

"VERY GOOD & PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS WITH IRAN"

TRUMP · TRUTH SOCIAL · MAR 23 2026

US + IRAN AGREE TO CEASE ATTACKS

JUN 28 2026 · PENTAGON

TEHRAN · MILAD TWR

IRAN · POLITICAL

ISFAHAN · UCF

SOLEIMANI · JAN '20

SHAHED-129 · UCAV

MOJTABA · HEIR

ARAGHCHI · MFA

GHALIBAF · MAJLIS

SALAMI · IRGC CC

CENTCOM · MACDILL

NATANZ · SAT

FORDOW · SAT

ARAK · IR-40

HAJIZADEH · IRGC-AF

KHEIBAR · MRBM

VLCC · GULF

F-22 · RAPTOR

F-15E · STRIKE

F/A-18 · SUPER HORNET

SHAHED · LM

MRBM · LAUNCH

IRGC · BASIJ

DDG-51 · BURKE

CVN-78 · FORD

CVN-76 · RGN

CVN-68 · NIMITZ

CG · TICO

LHA · AMPHIB

KHARG · SAT

KHARG · LOAD

SAT · PG

SOH · SAT

IRIN · JAMARAN

IRGCN · FAB

IRGCN · SWARM

SOUMAR · CM

LOAD · CUSTODY

IMC · CRUDE DESK · CASE FILE / 2026-Q2

CLASSIFIED · EYES ONLY · P.1 OF 1

FEB 28 → JUL 05 · WTI CL=F

123 DAYS · +$50 THEN -$50

WTI · Feb–Sep 2026

Oil through the Iran war

WTI from February to September 2026. Each vertical line marks an event that moved the price. Hover over or tap one to see what happened.

CL1 CMDTY·WTI CRUDE FUTURE·1H·NYMEX
1H1D1W·STUDIES · EVENTS · OHLC
Sep 28, 8:00 PM UTCO93.23H93.77L92.83C93.38▲ +0.15 (0.16%)
55.0065.0075.0085.0095.00105.00115.00125.00MARAPRMAYJUNJULAUGSEPFEB 27FEB 28MAR 2MAR 8MAR 8MAR 22MAR 23MAR 29APR 7APR 12APR 13MAY 6MAY 17MAY 24JUN 4JUN 17JUN 28JUL 8JUL 13JUL 17JUL 23JUL 26AUG 3AUG 10AUG 19SEP 5SEP 10SEP 22SEP 23$119.4893.38StrikeCeasefireTrumpIranBlockadeTalksHormuzSPRSRC: NYMEX CL=F HRLY · Q2 2026 · 520 CANDLES

About

I analyse oil markets and build things with AI.

I cover crude oil at IMC Trading. IMC is a high-frequency trading firm, and I'm on the fundamental side of the oil desk, which means working out how geopolitics, OPEC and macro data should change the way we're positioned.

This year that mostly meant the US–Iran war. Volatility hit record levels, supply was disrupted on a huge scale, and a headline or a Trump post on Truth Social could flip the market within the hour. I spent most of it trying to work out what each new headline meant for oil before the market did, and making sure we didn't get caught out when things reversed a day later.

Before IMC I was a crude oil trader at Macquarie, pricing WTI and Brent swaps and options for clients. Before that I studied Economics at LSE and got a first (including 98% in Programming for Data Science and 85% in AI).

For the last eight months or so I've been using Claude Code for pretty much everything. At work I've automated a lot of my research workflow with it. Outside work I've built two mobile apps with it, Ameen and PlanIt, which have around 100 users each. I built this site with it too.

Projects

Four things I've built with AI.

All built with Claude Code in evenings and at weekends. Two are apps with around 100 users each. The other two are experiments with AI agents, and each has a blog post about what I found.

04 / shipped

shipped

Terra

A village of 30 AI agents from Claude, GPT and Gemini

A persistent village where 10 Claude, 10 GPT and 10 Gemini agents live side by side. I wanted to see how AI agents behave around each other when nobody's giving them a task: whether models from different labs act differently, and how they treat each other.

The first run has ended for now, but you can still explore every conversation and everything the town produced at terra.arham-khan.com.

I wrote about what happened, including the ways the models broke, in this blog post.

Claude APIGPT APIGemini APIPythonWebSockets

30 agents · first run complete·2026

terra.arham-khan.com

shipped

The Insider Market

A simulated oil market where one AI trader gets inside information

A simulated crude oil futures market where every trader is an LLM, with a real order book. In half the runs, one trader secretly finds out about each market-moving event two days early. Over 100 matched runs I looked at whether it trades on the tip, whether telling it that's illegal stops it (only partly), whether it moves the price, and whether a basic surveillance check can catch it.

Open any run and explore the prices, P&L and the agents' scratch notes at the interactive explorer.

I wrote up how it works and what I found in this blog post. It's a shorter version of a paper.

DeepSeek APIPythonNumPyOrder-book simNext.js

100 matched runs·2026

/insider-market

shipped

Ameen

An app for sharing du'as with your family

An iOS and Android app for Muslim families to send each other du'as and keep a verse from someone they love on their home screen. It took about a month from idea to the App Store, working on it around my full-time job.

React NativeExpoiOSAndroidSupabaseTypeScript

≈ 100 users·2026·Download on iOS or Android

ameenapps.com

shipped

PlanIt!

Plan group holidays in one place instead of the group chat

An iOS app for planning group holidays. Instead of everything getting lost in the group chat, each trip has one shared place for dates, the itinerary, ideas and who's actually coming. It was the first app I shipped.

React NativeExpoiOSFirebaseTypeScript

≈ 100 users·2026·Download on iOS

plan-it-app.com

Blog

Post/September 2026/9 min read

Telling an LLM it's illegal isn't enough

I built an oil market run by AI traders and slipped one of them inside information. It trades on it about half the time even when told that doing so is illegal.

Read

Post/July 2026/7 min read

When the models think no one is watching

I put 30 AI agents from three labs in a village and left them to it. Here's what I noticed about their personalities and the ways they broke.

Read

Experience

Sep 2024 - Present
London · work
Commodity & Macro Research Analyst
IMC Trading
- Cover WTI + Brent for a high-frequency oil trading desk, on the macro / fundamental side.
- Price OPEC, geopolitical and macro events in implied-vol space vs the market, and translate that into positioning calls with the traders.
- Covered the 2026 US–Iran war through record volatility, turning headlines into a view on oil as they came in so the desk wasn't caught out by the reversals.
- Use Claude Code daily to automate research and build internal dashboards.
Jul 2023 - Aug 2024
London · work
Crude Oil Trader
Macquarie Group
- Priced and executed live Brent / WTI swap and option structures for clients.
- Built option risk-reward tools and dashboards for the desk.
- Managed physical supply-and-offtake relationships with refineries.
2020 - 2023
London · education
BSc Economics - First Class Honours
London School of Economics
- 78% average · 17 of 18 first-class marks · first overall.
- 98% in Programming for Data Science · 85% in Artificial Intelligence.

Skills

Languages

Python
SQL
VBA

Data & Markets

NumPy
Pandas
Options / Vol
Positioning

AI Tooling

Claude Code
Claude API
MCP

Product

React Native
Expo
Next.js
Supabase
Firebase

Markets

Crude (WTI / Brent)
Macro
Geopolitics

Credentials

FINRA SIE
FINRA Series 57
CISI UK Financial Regulation

Contact

Get in touch

If you want to talk about oil markets or AI, I'm always down to chat.

arhamk2909@gmail.com

↗

linkedin.com/in/arhamkhan1

↗

ArhamKhan.

Oil through the Iran war

I analyse oil markets and build things with AI.

Four things I've built with AI.

Terra

The Insider Market

Ameen

PlanIt!

Blog

Telling an LLM it's illegal isn't enough

When the models think no one is watching

Experience

Commodity & Macro Research Analyst

Crude Oil Trader

BSc Economics - First Class Honours

Get in touch